Danbury Hospital, CT

I finished up a rotation in Psych at Danbury Hospital just a few weeks ago and just wanted to provide some info and feedback. I did not choose to go to Danbury but I was more than satisfied with the placement.

Danbury Hospital is in Danbury, CT, which is < 20 minutes from the border between CT and NY. For those unfamiliar, CT borders NY on the eastern side of NY. The nearest airports are either White Plains, NY (HPN) to the SW or Hartford, CT (BDL) to the SE. Both of the airports are about 45 minutes away from Danbury, CT. There is a very small airport called Danbury Airport about 10 minutes away from the hospital but from what I can tell, this airport is only for small private planes so most of us probably won't fly in there.

The hospital accomodations are on-site. They have 3 rooms in South Tower and these rooms are the most convenient and largest that we have available as Psych students. They are just below the Psych administrative offices. You are also just a hallway's walk away from the inpatient psych ward. These rooms are pretty complete with bed, table, chair, sink, toilet, and shower in each room and they're fairly large being somewhat bigger than the SD2 rooms and you have it all to yourself.

There is 1 extra room (maybe 2) in the North Tower and this room is tiny (probably half the size of the SD2 rooms) that only has a bed, table, chair, and closet (no sink or bathroom). You'll share the bathrooms with the rest of the floor. There are separate mens' and womens' bathrooms that can accomodate at least 3-6 people using each of those facilities at a time but I've never had problems using any of the conveniences. There is also a little private 1 person bathroom that the floor shares and that one comes complete with sink, shower, toilet. Despite the small size, the advantages of the North room are that it has a TV, that floor is quieter (esp since it doesn't get any of those "Code ____" announcements), and you are only 2 floors above the library (whereas the South rooms require a short hike to get to the library) for books or Internet. You may get Internet in the South rooms but the connection can be spotty. If you get to your room and start to get all huffy about how imperfect the rooms are, just remind yourself that housing was INCLUDED. You didn't even need to bring bed linen or towels!

The laundry facilities are a little far but at least you get free use of the machines. They ask that we use the facilities only during the evening and weekends. I don't remember the hours but they are posted. I'm going to put directions here because the laundry room is a bit hard to find. The way to get to the laundry room is to go down to the 2nd floor of the South building. If you take the elevator, turn left as you walk out of the elevator. You'll see a residents' locker room on the left side (the door may or may not be open). Turn right (which will be in the direction opposite of the residents' locker room). As you walk, you'll see a really long hallway on the left. Do NOT go down this super long hallway. Keep walking straight in the direction opposite the residents' locker room. Looking ahead, you'll see that the hallway makes an L that veers to the left. Go to the L and turn left. Walk a little bit forward until you pass the usually open double-wide doors. Look left right after those doors. You'll see a sink hidden on your left side and looking ahead, you should see a long, smallish room with 1 washer and 1 dryer on your left side. In case that you're still lost, look around you. The laundry room is right on the border between an Internal Medicine department and a Pathology department.

I'd recommend having a car (or bum a ride from the colleague who is in the same rotation as yourself) at the hospital because the current arrangement is to spend a few weeks at the outpatient clinic which is not at the hospital but a 10-minute drive away. However, please note that parking on-site can be frustrating at peak hours. The layout isn't the best so parking can be a pain during the daytime. Basically, as a pseudo-employee of the hospital, you'll park in the parking structure.

Note: There are all your major stores within a 10-15 minute drive. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, major dept stores, etc so don't worry about not having supplies.

The way the rotation is setup, you do a few weeks at the outpatient clinic and then a few weeks at the inpatient clinic. The quality of the attendings and residents is consistent irregardless but you do spend your time very differently and will probably come away with different opinions. Some like outpatient more and others like inpatient more. Don't jump to conclusions and it will depend on what you are looking for out of the rotation. While at outpatient, you will spend some time sitting in on social group work to get an idea of what patients go through followed by sitting in with the attending or resident as they follow-up and occassionally admit patients. The outpatient is a much slower pace. Note: While at outpatient, don't forget to try Amigos Restaurant/Store, which is a short 3-minute walk down around the corner and past under the railroad bridge. Good stuff.

The inpatient is more fast-paced and probably more relevant as future doctors. Each team consists of an attending, a resident, and a med student (you). Each morning, your team will go through the psych floor and talk to all the patients that your team is responsible for. At 9am, you all will then get nurse's reports of activities that occurred the night before. After this meeting, your team may or may not (depends on the day of the week) then go through treatment planning for the patients. If you have to go through treatment planning, you may finish your morning activities around or past noon. Otherwise, you may finish before noon. Finishing your day depends entirely on your team, the patient load, and your personal efficiency. Your role on the team is to prepare follow-up papers for the next day, prepare any relevant discharge papers for the next day, and prepare any paperwork relevant to new patients. How efficiently you can prepare this paperwork properly determines how soon you finish your day. I believe you learn a lot more relevant stuff on the inpatient floor, despite the paper gruntwork that you do.

Irregardless of inpt or outpt, you go to lectures a few times a week. These lectures were on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday afternoons for me. Do NOT use these lectures to study for your tests. There isn't enough lecture time to cover every little detail. DO use these lectures as a way to explore more clinically relevant applications of medicine in psych so definitely read up on the topic before going in so you can ask questions and get more out of lectures.

That's it for now. Hope that proves helpful to whomever goes to Danbury.

Does Danbury psych is green bok rotation. I am asking as they do not have family medicine residency. They do not have psych residency itself, in fact westchester medical center resident rotate there for 1-2 months. Is it good to do psych to get cali PTAL.

Thin book, easy read, rocked the rotation and impressed quite a bit just from reading that. You honestly don't need anything more than that book for the avg psych rotation. Read it beforehand or the first week and you'll be golden. That along with good work ethic. I volunteered for ECT's during the week with Dr. (Forget the name...) and that seemed to score me some brownie points. You don't have to do stuff like that, but it's easy, kind of interesting, and will make you look good.

Overall, easy rotation and more interesting than I thought it would be. There's no reason not to get an easy A from this one.